Why Weeks is worth saving: a hall senior’s view

Weeks Hall was kindly donated to Imperial by British engineering firm Vickers in 1959 to be used as affordable undergraduate accommodation. Ungratefully, College have now rejected this generosity and plan to make “more efficient” (i.e. more profitable) use of the space.

Weeks is one of the few remaining halls near campus that are, on average, cheaper for a single room when compared to Eastside, Southside and Beit, but last week, Union Council voted against the idea to lobby College to keep it open.

Apparently, turning the building into academic space or childcare provision will be cheaper than renovating the bedrooms, which I must add, are in perfectly acceptable condition and are a joy to live in. Although saying that, a hall containing the UK’s second ever glass encased lift and is ten stories high is obviously the safest and most suitable place to open a childcare centre...

Regardless, there are endless reasons why Imperial needs reasonably priced undergraduate accommodation on campus and thousands have benefitted from living in Garden, Weeks, and Evelyn Gardens Halls thus far. College is failing to acknowledge there are students from low-income backgrounds who have a right to study here just as much as the wealthy.

A gap in the new, proposed rents of around £95 between those who will be living in Acton and living on campus will create a two-class society. Priced at £170 per week for a standard room, Weeks Hall would still provide the middle ground financially and would allow less wealthy students to enjoy the benefits of living on campus.

This two-class society will also place the rich at an academic and social advantage, since they will be able to stay in the library until late and not have to worry about missing the last tube home, and will have several hours more per week to join the 300+ clubs and societies which Imperial proudly boasts.

Neither the Union Council, nor Tom Wheeler are to blame for this situation. The manner in which the Union Council paper about the hall was worded did not give Weeks the chance to be saved. Council, made up of students from many different communities within college, vote on various topics during these meetings, and will not always have a vast knowledge of everything they vote on. We feel the paper detailing the closure of Weeks gave no background information that they should have known before deciding on whether to campaign to keep it open or not, and this information could have been sought through involving the community of Weeks.

The motion to close the halls was one of several other points within a long, complex paper, and we feel it was not paid enough attention as a topic, and, as a result, we are calling an emergency council meeting to vote on the topic again.

Clearly information flow within the student and staff body has failed if nobody representing Weeks Hall was informed of the issue, even though it was first raised at a Union Community & Welfare Board meeting last December.

As a resident in Weeks Hall two years ago, I lived through the closure of Garden Hall and recall the outrage amongst the student community. Yes, Garden needed a new lick of paint, but it was clean, functional and had character.

I remember the first time I saw Garden’s wooden lounge and feeling extremely lucky to have access to such a historical and beautiful building. Triple rooms cost just £74 a week, which was truly wonderful, and if it wasn’t for Garden Hall, many of my friends would not have been able to study here.

Upon deciding the time of closure for Garden Hall, apparently it was going to be “renovated” into offices practically immediately. Well, I have been inside, and almost two years later, every bed, every wardrobe, every bedside cabinet is still there. Homemade “SOS” campaign posters are still in the windows. Whoever branded Weeks “an inefficient use of space”, please do visit Garden Hall and inspect the millions of pounds worth of space that you have been wasting for two years.

Now as a Hall Senior in Weeks, I have bitterly told my Freshers the “story” of Garden Hall, while they sit open-eyed and struggle to imagine what lays behind the pretty white façade they walk past every day. College thinks it can get away with such outrageous changes to the accommodation system because in the future, nobody who remembers what there once was will be around to complain.

Next year’s cohort won’t know what they are missing out on. College deals with these unfair decisions based on the knowledge that whoever campaigns against them will soon be gone, and whoever will lose out as a result will be unaware of the previous alternatives available.

After the closure of Garden, the warden of Wilkinson Hall kindly agreed to take on the extra responsibility of merging Weeks with Wilkinson, under the assurance that Weeks would remain open for the forseeable future.

This was clearly not the case, and it is now not just the community of Weeks that will suffer, but also that of Wilkinson and Gabor. Brunches, BBQ’s and parties are held jointly between Wilkinson & Weeks and Gabor on a regular basis, with the two (technically three) halls sharing social spaces. 376 students will be losing one of the best social spaces Imperial has to offer, not just the residents of Weeks.

After the initial Against Acton campaign, College assured us that rent in Woodward Hall would be cheap as a compromise to make up for the fact that students will have to live at least a forty minute commute away from campus, in a not so nice area. At least one year later, with a new student Council, this compromise seems to have been forgotten, with College recently leading the Union Council to vote on apparently “reducing” rent in Woodward Hall to an average of £120 but paid for by extortionate increases in Eastside and Southside rents to £200-215.

That College thinks it is acceptable to force Princes Gardens residents to subsidise the cost of Woodward Hall astounds me.

Teenagers are attracted to historic universities such as Oxford and Cambridge, and if Imperial wants to compete with such institutions, increasing student satisfaction will involve building up not just a reputation for academic excellence, but also one for tradition, both of which will encourage more donations towards the College endowment will result.

Oxbridge heavily subsidise student accommodation, and in this case the responsibility of subsiding an unpopular hall in Acton should be cast onto the College rather those who want to live closer to campus.

College and the Union seem to be obsessed with the figure they have managed to achieve through number manipulation of an average rent of £166 per week. As one of the more reasonably priced halls, keeping Weeks open would actually decrease this average and would reduce the need to increase Princes Gardens rent so extortionately.

It is also worth noting that this average of £166 a week does not take into account the £20 a week which Woodward residents will have to spend on travel, and it has not been stated explicitly how long the average will remain at this value.

The result of last week’s council meeting is not a victory, and the Union Council were essentially pushed into a corner and merely voted for the option that was “less bad”. Selfishly, College set these figures based on the very wrong assumption that accommodation at Imperial is already affordable.

At this week’s “Imperial Questions Live” Debra Humphris repeatedly mentioned the issue of transparency regarding rent, however the data, which has been released sets the cost of Wardening as an “opportunity cost” of £795,000 annually.

In my opinion, this cost simply does not exist, as Imperial do not pay a single penny towards Wardening; all they lose is the potential “profit” that could be made from not giving those rooms to students. Ignoring this “opportunity cost”, Halls of Residence actually make a profit of £351,597 annually, and what we really want is for this so-called “transparency” to actually reveal the truth, either about the costs of halls or even any plans to close them down in the first place.

Due to licensing rules, from next year onwards under 18’s will not be allowed to live in Beit. This will leave them with two options: pay £200 per week to live on campus, or live in Acton, which perhaps may not be the safest place for an underage student to live.

Not only that, some students need to live on or near campus for medical reasons; again they will be forced to live in unmanageable amounts of debt, or compromise their wellbeing and accessibility through financial pressure to live in Acton.

It is College who should be held accountable for this failure in recognising the needs and feelings of the students, and, quite honestly, Imperial is going to lose out in the future as a result of declining student satisfaction. Endowment is already low, and quite honestly I do not know a single student who would be willing to donate money to Imperial upon graduation.

I had a conversation with Debra Humphris after Imperial Questions Live and all the questions she was unable or unwilling to answer she referenced to “Estates”. I don’t know who “Estates” are, but if they are deciding the future of hundreds of undergraduates without telling the Union and its students the reasons why, something is very wrong with how this university is run.